


7 December, 1941

by amo_amare



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Timey-Wimey, episode: The Angels Take Manhattan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amo_amare/pseuds/amo_amare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't change the future from the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	7 December, 1941

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladymercury_10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladymercury_10/gifts).



> Happy Wholidays, love. x

Nothing about New York in 1941 feels like home. The clothes, the cars, the accents: nothing is familiar. 

During the day, she can pretend. She’d done a lot of pretending, in her days with the Doctor: pretending to know where she was, what she was doing, and that she absolutely, positively belonged there. “Just walk around like you own the place” was always the Doctor’s advice, and so that’s what she did in her new life in New York. (At least she had the excuse of being Scottish. Americans in 1941 knew even less about her home country, and any slips with customs or terminology could be easily blamed on her being foreign.)

During the day, Rory follows her lead, drawing on her confidence to get him through the day-to-day trials of inventing a life for yourself in the past. River managed to forge them documentation and stash away a bit of money, but even with her assistance, it is by no means easy. Amy barrels forward as she always does, smoothing over both their gaffes and blunders with a laugh and a smile. She starts to think of “Mrs. Rory Williams” as a character she’s playing on the stage. (Never before could she imagine so many people actually calling her that.)

During the day, she’s Mrs. Rory Williams. At night, beneath the heavy cotton quilt of their bed, in the tiny one bedroom apartment they share above a tailor’s and a bakery, she is still Amy, and everything around her feels wrong. The sheets on her bed are too heavy, the glow from the streetlights is the wrong color, and the air itself doesn’t have the right smell. And she’s living on the wrong side of history.

Her homeland is at war. That had been a shock, landing in the middle of World War II, a war the Americans are still trying desperately to deny; a war she’s only ever read about in books. The people she meets hear her accent and wonder: is she a refugee? Have she and her husband fled from the war? The men want to talk politics with Rory and explain to him why the fighting is no business of theirs, and she wants to scream at them and demand to know how many lives must be lost before they can be moved to care. Rory calms her down and comforts her, whispers, “Don’t be so hard, Amy: you know how things turn out. You know what day is coming for them.”

A handful of months later, and that day is here. She wants to wake Rory up and ask him if he remembers. How can he be sleeping if he remembers? 

But then, he’s always been able to sleep through anything: he’s used to 12 hour shifts and catching cat naps in the on-call room at the hospital. One time, coming home late from a party dressed as a naughty librarian, she’d forgotten he was spending the night in her room, and she sat on him. He was tucked up under her covers, blankets pulled up to his nose, she hadn’t seen him lying there, and she sat right on top of him in her haste to be rid of her itchy panty hose. He’d barely stirred.

Lightning storms, lover’s quarrels, nights before big exams: nothing kept Rory from sleep.

Still, there was always one sure way to wake him up.

Through the wall, she can hear their neighbor’s old grandfather clock striking midnight. She waits until the reverberations of the last chiming gong fade into the darkness before turning to her husband and whispering softly: “Rory...”

His eyes open immediately, as if he’d never been asleep. “Amy? What’s wrong?”

She watches him rub his hands across his face, waiting for his eyes to adjust and find her in the dark. When they do, she whispers, “Rory, it’s the 7th of December.”

His breath catches for just a moment, then he lets it out in a sigh. “I know,” he answers, voice full of resignation. “I didn’t think you would remember. You never had paid much attention in history class.”

Amy ignores the dig, and instead reaches for his hand. “What do we do?” Her question is a plea.

“What do you mean? What _can_ we do?”

Instead of his face, she looks at his hand: she’s pulled it up between them, holding it in both of her own. She picks at the ragged skin of his cuticles as if it were her own. “There has to be something...” she whispers.

He knows better than to offer her empty platitudes. Instead, he draws her into his arms. “I imagine we’ll find quite a bit we can do in the coming years.”

She echoes the word bitterly: “Years. God, it sounds so wrong: years! We shouldn’t _know that:_ , Rory, we shouldn’t know any of it!”

“I know.” It’s an admission more than an offer of comfort.

Amy buries her face in his shoulder and lets her tears sink into his cotton undershirt. The clock strikes the half hour. She looks up at the ceiling.

“Is it always going to be like this, Rory? Is this the life we’re doomed to lead, knowing everything before it happens, helpless to do anything about it?”

For a time, he doesn’t answer. She can feel his adam’s apple bob when he swallows once, then twice. “There are things we don’t know,” he finally says.

“Like what? The things I didn’t pay any attention to in school?” The bitterness hasn’t left her voice.

In contrast, he tries to make his tone light. “Like...what we’re going to have for breakfast.” Amy tsks, and he knows he’s annoyed her, but he hurries on anyway. “I’m serious! We haven’t got anything in the fridge but a jar of that horrid stuff the Americans call ‘Miracle Whip’, and I know I don’t fancy _that_.” 

There’s a little snort of breath that could be a laugh, and so he goes on. “We don’t know what Edna Lowenstein is going to serve at that dinner party she’s invited us to on Saturday, or what horrible card game her husband is going to force us to play afterwards. You don’t know if you’re going to miss the bus to your interview next Thursday, even though _I’ve_ got a pretty good idea, and you don’t know if you’ll be able to find a taxi instead. We don’t know how long we’re going to have to stay in this horrid little flat until we can afford a new one, or how long it’s going to be before we start remembering to say ‘apartment’ instead.”

Amy is genuinely smiling now, softly chuckling and sniffling against his chest. Still, she’s not completely ready to give in. 

“What are we going to do about the rest of it? All of the other things we do know? How will we live with it?”

His voice is serious again when he answers. “That’s another one of the things we’re going to have to find out.”


End file.
